They've just learned about the Quarter Quell, and Haymitch responds to it as he responds to everything--by breaking out the booze.Chapter ThirteenI've barely gotten the bottle to my lips when my front door opens. There's no preliminary doorbell or knock, and I am half-expecting Peacekeepers, but it's Peeta.

"Are you crazy?" I ask him, and lead him to the kitchen. "You want to go back?"

"No. But I want to make sure Katniss gets home."

"And you think you're better at the arena than I am?"

"I think I'm in better shape with one leg than you are with two," he says, and that's hard to argue with. "Besides, like you said, I'm not prepared to be a mentor. She's going to need someone who knows how to work sponsors and has connections in the Capitol. Get her whatever she needs."

I sit down at the table and rub my head. "So, your idea of how to repay you for not sending you anything and choosing Katniss is to let you die in the arena while I don't send you anything and choose Katniss."

"It's what I want." He shakes his head. "No, it's not what I want. I want to grow up, marry Katniss, and grow old and have kids and grandkids. I want them all to dread visits from grumpy Uncle Haymitch, who gives them all the best presents. I want to watch my niece grow up. But that's not one of my choices. So, of the choices I have, I want to make sure Katniss lives."

"It could happen if you were the mentor."

"I need you mentoring. You're better at it than I am."

"And if I say no?"

He gives me a bitter smile, so at odds with the Peeta I'm used to that it throws me. "Do you think I never talked to the Careers last year? I know how to beat the volunteer system. If you try to volunteer for me, I can get around it. Do you know how to do it if I volunteer for you?"

I could lie, but I don't. Learning how to make them accept me as a volunteer over other willing volunteers was never a skill I felt it necessary to have before. I shake my head.

Capitulating like this seems to take the furious energy out of Peeta. He sits down across from me, his head in his hands, and says, "It's better this way. If I'd died like I was supposed to last year, she wouldn't be in trouble in the first place. She never should have come back for me."

"She wouldn't be Katniss if she hadn't."

"That's another thing," he says. "I gave her this whole guilt-trip about how I was going to stay me, and not let anything change me. Self-righteous stuff, like I was so much better than she was. She knew she couldn't afford to do that. But I think she listened. I think she let me guilt her about it, and now that's why they're trying to kill her."

I put down the bottle. "Listen to me, Peeta. I mean this. What you told her, that's the most important thing you could have said. And I think it's why you're in better shape than either of us now. You know what it really means. You didn't break."

He looks up. "Then why do I feel broken, Haymitch?" He puts his hands over his face and starts to cry. "I just want to do what's right. Get her through the arena, and then she can have the life she was supposed to have. I had no business twisting her life around my stupid fantasies. It wasn't fair."

"It saved her life," I remind him. I don't add, And yours, since in his current mood, he probably wouldn't think that was a benefit. "You want to know why I could be a decent mentor? It's because you gave me something I could use for all those contacts in the Capitol. She knows that. And she loves you. Why are you trying to die?"

"I'm not trying to die," he says, and I'm not sure even he realizes that he's lying. "And I know she cares about me--"

"Loves you."

"Cares about me." He wipes his face. "But she's got this whole other life. She's got her mom and Prim. She has Gale. She can marry Gale someday. They'll have kids. Maybe she'll name one after me. I'd like that. Though he'd probably end up in the arena, wouldn't he?"

"Peeta, you have people to live for, too. You've been getting along with your family..."

"Yeah. They're over at my house now. I was watching with them. I was holding Betony. I have to tell them to go back to town. I can get them out of the crossfire. And that's not the stupid martyr act anymore. My brother Ed has taken lashes three times already - not big ones like Gale took, but five or six at a time. I wasn't supposed to know, but Delly told me. They're going to push him out of his shop. And my parents are losing everything. They say they don't care, but... there's no reason for them to lose everything. Not anymore. Three or four months of getting along isn't worth wrecking the rest of their lives. Maybe by the time Betony's twelve, the Capitol will have forgotten about me. They leave Madge alone, pretty much, except when she's actually doing something. It'll be better for them if I'm already gone before it happens."

"Peeta, stop it."

"I can't do anything else for them. But I can do this for Katniss. I can get her through the arena. We can. Will you help, Haymitch?"

"You're crazy."

"I fit right in around here."

"Not even close. You're a whole different level of crazy."

"Will you help me?"

"What you're talking about isn't helping you."

"It's helping me make my life mean something." He wipes away the last of his tears. "I'm going to die either way, Haymitch. Will you help me make sure it counts for something?"

Something huge and terrible is swelling in my chest, closing off my throat, making my eyes burn. "Yeah," I say. "Yeah, fine. I'll help you die nobly so Katniss can live. Are you happy? Get out of here."

He nods solemnly, then stands up and leaves without another word.

I sit and wait for Katniss. Outside, I can hear Prim and Gale calling for her. I'm guessing she had some kind of major breakdown, but I know she'll be here soon. She'll be here before she goes back to them, to these people Peeta thinks she'd rather live for. Because I'm the grown-up who can make it all better. I can fix it all somehow. I look at the painting Peeta did of Katniss and me in District Eleven, the way she's looking at me in it.

I drink.

I know what she's going to ask, once she's gotten outside her head enough to realize that Peeta could die. I know it the same way I know that she'll be here. She'll tell me that she wants me to go into the arena, and when I tell her that Peeta won't allow it, she'll ask me to sacrifice her to save him.

I am right. She shows up an hour after he leaves, looking like she's screaming inside her skull. The only thing I don't anticipate is that she also asks for a drink. I give her one. I let her have the whole bottle. She needs it as much as I do. Ruth will be furious, but somehow, that doesn't strike me as a major problem right now.

I promise her that I'll let her die nobly, so that Peeta can live.

When she leaves, I pick up the phone and call Cinna.

"Looks like you'll get to use your new fire technique after all," I say as soon as he says hello.

"Not funny." His voice is cold. "You're drunk."

"Not nearly drunk enough."

He's quiet for a long time, then says, "Haymitch, I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Sorry?"

"What else is there to say? What would make it better?"

I can't think of a thing. It's not Cinna's fault, and he has no control over it.

There's someone who does, though. I mumble for a minute, trying to sound like I'm just griping, then say, "If I had a second alone with the Head Gamemaker..."

If Cinna picks up what I'm asking for, he obviously can't say anything about it. Instead, he tells me to stop drinking, or he'll send the medics out to District Twelve on the next train. "And just so you know, I mean that literally," he says, then hangs up on me.

I don't stop drinking. No power on earth could make me stop drinking tonight. Eventually, I pass out, and my whole host of terrors visits me. All of them start out as different people -- Lacklen, my mother, Digger, Maysilee, Effie, Hazelle -- but all of them end up as Katniss and Peeta, dying no matter what I do, bleeding out their lives, dissolving in my arms.

When Peeta wakes me up late the next afternoon, I embrace him. I don't think I've ever done that before. He takes it stoically, then hauls me up off the floor and sits me down on the couch. "Stay there," he says, looking oddly cold. "I have work to do."

He goes to the kitchen and starts shifting things around. I want to tell him that Hazelle will kill him, but it's Hazelle's day off, and somehow, I don't think Peeta would be all that upset about death threats from her at this point, anyway. He brews coffee and brings the pot out to the living room. He doesn't need to tell me that I'm to sober up. I see him take a large box upstairs, and wander out to the kitchen. He's taken down all my liquor bottles for something. Probably means to start rationing them again.

He's still scurrying around upstairs when Katniss shows up, looking like she's been run over by a train and then dragged for a while for good measure. I think I probably looked the same the first time I tried white liquor. It takes some getting used to.

She has brought me broth. I drink it. We don't talk.

Peeta comes downstairs with his cardboard box, and I hear an ominous clinking noise. "There," he says. "It's done."

"What's done?" Katniss asks.

But it's obvious. The box contains at least twenty empty white liquor bottles. I know they haven't just been lying around, not with Hazelle in to clean. He's dumped it down the drain, and bribed Ripper not to sell me anymore.

For a minute, I forget that I spent the night dreaming about his death. I forget that he's brought me bread almost every day. I forget that he's cleaned me up when I've fallen face first in my own puke.

I take a swing at him with my knife.

He ducks it easily. Child's play after fighting with Cato, I guess. He isn't looking at either of us, not really, and he has cloaked last night's tears with a kind of cold anger.

"What business is it of yours?" Katniss demands.

"It's completely my business. However it falls out, two of us are going to be in the arena again with the other as mentor. We can't afford any drunkards on this team. Especially not you, Katniss."

And of course, that's the point of the anger. I promised him I'd help keep her safe, and the first thing I did was get her drunk. Katniss offers to keep me supplied, but Peeta cuts off that thought as well, threatening to turn her in and let her do time in the stocks.

I am not sure I like this version of Peeta -- this Peeta is Mirrem's son. Mirrem did the same thing to make Dannel get his nose out of the bottle. Of course, Dannel had a whole life ahead of him.

"What's the point to this?" I ask.

"The point is that two of us are coming home from the Capitol," he says. "One mentor and one victor. Effie's sending me recordings of all the living victors. We're going to watch their Games and learn everything we can about how they fight. We're going to put on weight and get strong. We're going to start acting like Careers. And one of us is going to be a victor again whether you to like it or not." He storms out and slams the door, making my skull ring.

We both know that he intends for us to come home. I don't tell her that I promised him exactly that, any more than I'll tell him that I promised her the same thing.

A train arrives the next morning, and I see a delivery box arrive at Peeta's house. Probably the tapes he asked Effie for. I am not terribly interested. Hazelle has managed to sneak in a single bottle of liquor, but says that Ripper won't sell her anymore, either. Peeta put the fear of the law in her.

"Nice kid," Hazelle says. "Does he know what it'll do to you to quit cold?"

"He has no idea. He thinks he does, but he doesn't."

She rolls her eyes, and is reaching for a dish towel when there is a thundering knock on my door. There's no pause to wait for an answer when the door bursts open and Romulus Thread comes into my kitchen, trailed by two large lackeys.

"Need something?" I ask.

"You're wanted at the station," he says, his eyes glittering unpleasantly. "Right now."

"You could just ask," Hazelle says.

Thread looks at her with distaste. "You weren't addressed." He signals, and the two lackeys grab me and shove me out the door to a waiting car. They don't say a word all the way to the train station. Thread pulls me out of the car roughly and shoves me toward the door to a luxury cabin.

"I'll just wait right here," he says.

The door opens, and Plutarch Heavensbee comes out. "That won't be necessary, Officer Thread," he says. "Thank you for your diligence. I'll have a word with Mr. Abernathy, then I'm sure he can get home on his own."

Thread grimaces, but calls off his squad. After all, the Head Gamemaker outranks him.

"Get inside," Plutarch says.

I go. Fulvia is sitting at an ornate desk, going through files. She looks up, but doesn't smile.

"What do you want?" I ask.

"My personal compartment isn't bugged," Plutarch says. "There are advantages to my position. And I'm not the one who called this meeting."

"What?"

"Cinna said you wanted to see me."

I vaguely remember telling Cinna that I wanted a few minutes alone with the Head Gamemaker, but I don't remember what I meant to tell him. I cover for it. "When did you know?" I ask.

"The same time as the rest of Panem," he says. "I'm in charge of the Games, not the tributes."

"Then why were you waiting for the Quell? Why didn't we start things months ago?"

"Isn't that obvious?" Fulvia says waspishly. "When all of Panem is watching, we can make a definitive statement. We can declare war on the Capitol in a way that there's no better medium for. It will reach everyone. It will --"

I grab her arm and glare at her. "A statement?"

"Yes," Plutarch says, prying me off her. "A statement. Perhaps if we'd had the mockingjay all along, we could have made the statement in some other way."

I grab him and hurl him into the wall, pinning him against the rich velvet curtains. Fulvia is up and trying to dislodge me, but I ignore her.

"A statement," I say. "You said you were going to take care of the arena. How many tributes were you going to let die for your statement? Were you just going to wait for the bloodbath? Or go through the whole thing and get a victor? Or were you planning on just killing them all? That'd be some statement."

"I hardly think that's a relevant question now. Most of the tributes will be our people, so--"

"And that makes a difference to you?"

"Of course it does."

I give him a shake, then I say, "I remember what I wanted to say now. And you're going to listen to it. You really didn't need to come all the way here. It's pretty brief."

"I'm listening," he says.

"You had us put things off to make a statement at your Games. This didn't need to happen. And if either of my kids dies in your arena, I'm going to slit your damn throat. That's all." I let him go, shrug Fulvia off my back, and leave.

They don't come after me, or send the Peacekeepers.

It was probably not too smart to threaten people on my own side, but I feel better. I made promises to Katniss and Peeta -- both of them want to die. I intend to break both promises. They're going to live whether they want to or not.

But they're going to have to get through the arena to do it. They're going to be fighting with killers this time, every single one of them. I'll get them allies. I know that Johanna will be in the arena. Like Katniss, she's the only female victor in her district. She hates everything about their storyline, but she hates the Capitol more, so she'll work with me. I can't see Snow letting Finnick out of it; he's going to age out of his usefulness soon anyway, as far as Snow's interests are concerned. So that's another. I'll have to find a way to meet with them all. They'll all want to save Katniss -- she's the mockingjay, and they want her speaking for them -- but I'm going to have to convince them that if Peeta dies, she won't function at all, let alone lead a rebellion.

When I get back to my house, I am feeling better. Stronger. Hazelle asks what happened, and I tell her that I got in trouble with the Head Gamemaker.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine."

She nods.

The phone rings. Peeta has got the tapes, as I suspected. He's called Katniss, and she's over there (I imagine her sitting in his kitchen, glaring at him), and I need to come as well. We're going to watch the eleventh Hunger Games. Mags's games. I can't imagine that would help. If Mags is called, certainly one of the younger Careers in District Four will volunteer. But I agree to come over.

Peeta puts us through exercises before we sit down. I get winded easily, and both of the kids look disgusted with me.

Then we watch the tape.

I have never seen Mags as young woman before, and I realize she was very beautiful once. Vicious, but beautiful. Even before her ally (the girl from Nine) is captured and abused for days, Mags is a force to be reckoned with. She fights her way to the Cornucopia and gets more weapons than she needs (though the supplies that year consist entirely of very primitive weapons), and after she makes her alliance, the two of them set up a fortress to live in. The ally is captured when she's out foraging.

The highlight reel is delicate about what happens to her after she's captured. The Capitol audience didn't care for it. But it is quite lovingly devoted to Mags's revenge -- the fire trap, and her systematic destruction of her enemies with a slingshot and a bag full of rocks. Honestly, I have a crazy desire to travel in time so I can sponsor her myself.

The kids have no idea what she's like now; they're watching a stranger. I'm not sure Katniss even understands what happened, given the pussyfooting around it that the tape did; in a lot of ways, she's very innocent. I wish I could keep her that way.

I walk her home after Peeta gives us both a training schedule. I don't know if she was sincere or trying to exasperate Peeta as much as he's been exasperating her, but she suggests that they call Gale on Sundays to teach us all about snares. If she's not sincere, it backfires -- Peeta declares the idea brilliant and tells her to set it up.

"Are you seriously going to bring Gale into this?" I ask her.

She shrugs. "May as well. He knows everything about snares."

"You're not bad yourself."

"I can get us from A to B. He can get us to Z."

We walk a little further. I watch her. She looks like she's walking on glass shards. I put my hand on her shoulder. "Why are you doing this?"

"Maybe if he trains enough, it'll be easier to keep him alive."

I nod. I doubt it'll make a difference. A few months of training won't be any counter to the years the Careers have. I doubt either of them really believes otherwise. But if it keeps them both sane to take control over the only thing they can take control of, I guess there's no harm in it. Ruth seems to understand this, and develops a diet regimen for us. She also slips me herbs to stop the shakes, and tells Peeta that I'm to be allowed beer. Not a lot of it, and she'll control the supply, but she says it won't do anyone any good if I have a heart attack.

Gale's visit on the first Sunday is about as awkward as I figured it would be. He's trying as hard as he can, and is obviously worried about Katniss, but he doesn't care at all about Peeta and me, and isn't good at pretending. Peeta takes the lessons very seriously, asks smart questions, and makes sure to address any issues of physical strength which might be a problem for Katniss. By the second Sunday, he's acquired a camera, and takes pictures that he says he means to study. Why he feels a need to study a picture of Gale and Katniss sharing a joke over lunch is sort of a mystery, but he doesn't explain himself to me, and I doubt they even noticed him snapping it.

We run every morning. I am hopeless at it. My lungs seize up and my legs don't want to cooperate. The old wound in my gut feels fresh and new, and not at all exciting. Peeta can't get his hands on proper training weights, so we spend hours lifting buckets of water, rocks, and, on occasion, Katniss. Katniss insists on trying to lift us, but doesn't get far.

She can't get to her bows and arrows to teach us archery, but she does her best to teach aim with darts from Murphy's Pub (where Ruth gets my beer), and later, throwing knives. She seems annoyed that I can't hit the house with my knife, but this is nothing new. In the arena, I only had one knife, and it didn't seem like a good idea to throw it away. For Katniss, this is unthinkable. She's getting stronger on the training regimen, but she just doesn't have the build to be a physical player. Peeta tries to teach her wrestling moves to throw an opponent, but she's as hopeless at it as I am at throwing knives. She depends completely on ranged weapons. She doesn't understand that Peeta and I can handle getting in close and cutting a little bit better than she can. She tells Peeta she doesn't want him getting in close to anyone anyway, and makes him practice throwing. He gets better. I do not.

April melts away. Katniss shows us what she can find inside the fence as far as edible plants go, but it's not much. She claims that the dandelions our groundskeeper keeps pulling up are one of the best plants around. Peeta asks how they can figure out whether a new plant is edible, and we spend an afternoon with Ruth trying to figure it out, but nothing is surefire. If you're starving, the time it takes to determine toxicity could kill you anyway. Katniss turns seventeen at the beginning of May, and we don't pay any attention to it. Peeta turns seventeen three weeks later, and we ignore that, too.

Madge Undersee sneaks us papers from the Capitol. Katniss and Peeta supposedly have good odds among the gamblers. I am presumed to have some magical power to save them both by various fans of their romance, unless I go into the arena, in which case my odds are nowhere near as good as theirs. My Games are not shown often, for obvious reasons, and all they see when they are shown is me being rescued by Maysilee and walking aimlessly through the woods. Johanna Mason has fanatic followers in the Capitol, and also has good odds. Finnick is regularly near the top. I ask if I can keep the papers, since the mayor was throwing them out anyway. I want to read more than the odds.

Hazelle keeps my house pin neat, and takes it upon herself to put fresh wildflowers in all the vases. She cooks every damned thing in the world that I like, if she can get hold of it. I catch her reading the papers one day. She is barely keeping her anger in check. I think it's about the betting, but when I go to her, I find her in another part of the paper altogether. News from the districts. The parts I have really been reading.

"Bad weather?" she asks, pointing at news from Districts Four and Eleven. "Industrial accidents? More of them?"

"It's been a bad luck year," I say.

"And what's this?" she asks, turning over the page to a tiny blurb I hadn't seen yet. "What's this about expected coal shortages this summer? There's no vein that's about to play out!"

I stare at this. There's nothing happening here. Nothing that would cause an "expected coal shortage."

Except, of course, for the mockingjay pin, and a handful of poison berries, and the riots that have spread under those symbols all over the country.

I haven't been careful talking about the newspapers in the house. It's not really illegal to have them, just discouraged. Snow knows I'm reading. And it's a warning.

"I'm taking a shower," I say.

"What?"

"Want to join me?" I grin, and try to make my voice sound lecherous.

She slaps me.

I grab her wrist and turn her around, kissing her. She struggles against me, and I pull her close and whisper in her ear. "I need to talk to you. The water covers it."

She draws away, blinking, then puts a tease in her voice. "Really, Haymitch, a girl likes to be romanced a little on something like that."

"You said it yourself, I don't have the manners for a pigsty. Come on, what do you say?"

She rolls her eyes and says, "Fine."

We go upstairs to my bathroom, and I turn on the water. I sit on the edge of the tub, as close to the sound as I can. Hazelle sits beside me.

"What?" she asks.

I'm not even sure where to start. "There's no coal shortage coming," I say.

"I know."

"Just the Quell." She looks confused. I lean closer to her, not wanting to take the slightest chance that anyone will be able to make anything out over the water. "Something big is going to happen during the Quell," I say. "I don't know exactly when. But it'll be big. And Snow's going to take it out on District Twelve."

Her eyes widen. "Then don't do it!"

"It's too late. It's already started. But you'll still be here. Find an escape route. Keep your eye on things, and be ready to move."

"What kind of escape route?"

"I don't know. The mines go way under the fence. The Seam -- the real Seam -- goes halfway to District Eleven."

"And people die in there trying to find the way out."

"I don't know, then," I say. "But you have to get out of here if something happens. You have to get as many people as you can out."

I figure I'm done, and move to get up, but Hazelle locks her hands behind my neck and keeps me beside her. "Haymitch, they'll kill you if you're there in the Capitol."

"I know. Hopefully, I'll have an escape route, too."

She strokes my hair, looking for something to say, and kisses me instead.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Escaping," she says.

We escape together. This time we manage to call each other by the right names.

The next day, I get a notice that I am not a licensed employer in District Twelve -- and that even if I were, I have abused my position -- and Hazelle is sent home by Peacekeepers pretending to be solicitous of her welfare.

Ah I feel like this is the chapter I've been waiting for. Between Hazelle and Haymitch just realizing how bad and desperate they both are at the end of this chapter, to seeing how Peeta and Haymitch talk out who is going into the arena and who is coming out.

I know you and I have talked about this several times, with one of the flaws of the books being that it is all from Katniss's perspective, but it makes it all the more interesting to read your story since we know what is going to happen but we are hearing it from an entirely different perspective.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Haymitch during the Games, to see some of the things going on outside the arena. (Well, okay, I'd be looking forward to seeing Haymitch gripe about soggy oatmeal in a diner somewhere, but Haymitch involved in Important Things will be even better!)

That's why I finally picked Haymitch instead of Peeta, even though I'd already done the first chapter from Peeta's POV. We know what happens in the arena. Peeta is there for it. Sure, there are some side events, especially near the end, that he's more privy to than Katniss is, but on the whole, his experience is very much her experience. Haymitch, on the other hand, has a whole different thing happening. I can find a way to give Haymitch a view of the things Katniss might have missed in the arena, but there was no way to give Peeta a view of what was going on anywhere else.

Another excellent chapter. I don't know if I've mentioned it before or not, but I really like the backstory you've given Mags. I'm getting excited about seeing the games from Haymitch's pov since he'll have a totally different perspective than Katniss since he's not in the arena and all. Thanks!Robin

I've been avoiding HG ever since it became the Latest Thing(tm), but you've sent me to the wiki to learn stuff I didn't understand about the plot (and who people were, etc.). So I have a quick question about Hazelle--wasn't she hired by Katniss and Peeta? The wiki said so, but then, hey, Wiki.

Katniss convinced Haymitch (who was a complete slob) to hire her after her business washing clothes dried up, "resulting in some extra money for her and greatly increasing Haymitch's standard of living." ;p